WITTGENSTEIN, KRIPKENSTEIN, AND THE SKEPTICAL PARADOX

Transcription

1 WITTGENSTEIN, KRIPKENSTEIN, AND THE SKEPTICAL PARADOX By JON HENDRIX A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLOIRDA

3 Chair: Kirk Ludwig Major: Philosophy Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts WITTGENSTEIN, KRIPKENSTEIN, AND THE SKEPTICAL PARADOX By Jon Hendrix May 2007 Saul Kripke, in his work Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, presents an interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein s Philosophical Investigations whereby Wittgenstein is taken to be offering a paradox with respect to language. The paradox, according to Kripke, stems from the nonexistence of facts which establish claims about what a speaker meant by a particular term on a given occasion, and threatens the very possibility or rule-following and language. Kripke interprets Wittgenstein as offering a solution to this problem that rejects truth-conditional semantics and in its place establishes a theory focusing on conditions of warranted assertion. In this thesis, it is argued that Kripke s interpretation of Wittgenstein is incorrect. Examination of the text of the Philosophical Investigations reveals a much more complicated view of language than Kripke offers, and certain passages conflict directly with the interpretation given. This thesis, in addition to the exegetical question of the appropriateness of Kripke s interpretation, is also concerned with the skeptical challenge posed in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke s skeptical solution to this problem is examined and found wanting in several respects. Once the notion of warranted assertion is spelled out in terms of communal agreement, it becomes clear that Kripke has not answered the skeptic at all, as claims about 3

4 meaning entail claims about correct use, and communal agreement, a statistical notion, cannot ground such claims. Having found the skeptical solution unsatisfactory, the thesis focuses on direct answers to the skeptic, whereby certain types of fact are submitted as meaning-fixing facts. The most popular of these answers are those which cite a speaker s dispositions to behave with respect to a given word in hypothetical situations. There are several different varieties of dispositionalism, and the most prominent are discussed. It is contended that Saul Kripke s objections to dispositionalism are correct, and that no version of dispositionalism can serve as an answer to the skeptic. Dispositionalism is an attempt to reduce semantic facts to behavioral facts. The question is raised as to why this is necessary. It is suggested that there is no prima facie reason to think that semantic or normative facts are unsuitable as answers to Kripke s skeptic, and several objections to non-reductionism are considered and rejected. While a fully developed nonreductive theory is beyond the scope of this thesis, some groundwork is done, paving the way for such a theory. 4

5 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In '1 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein presents an account of language drawn from a passage of St. Augustine=s Confessions. In this passage, Augustine recounts how he learned the meaning of words as a child: When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually leant to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires. 1 This account has two important features. The first is that words are used to name objects. If this alone is the function of a word, then it would seem that the meaning of that word is the object named. Meaningfulness in general, according to this account, is a matter of a word picking out some object. The second feature is that the learning and teaching of a language is done ostensively. Understanding of a word rests on observation of its use by competent speakers of the language, or on a more direct method of explanation, exemplified by pointing towards the intend object and uttering AThis is called >x. That the first feature of the Augustinian account has been found in the writings of other philosophers subsequent to Augustine, including the early Wittgenstein, testifies to its appeal. 1 Augustine, Confessions, I.8 as recounted in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations '1 footnote 1. 5

6 One can see this in the picture theory in the Tractatus. 2 Wittgenstein asserts that Asimple signs have as their meanings the objects that they name. 3 According to the Tractatus, the world is made up of facts: states of affairs which obtain. States of affairs are combinations of objects, and are represented by propositions, whose structures are isomorphic to the states of affairs that they represent (and so propositions are facts as well, namely, the fact that their constituents are arranged in a certain way). Words constitute the elements of a proposition, and name the objects in the relevant state of affairs, for which they are the counterparts. 4 There is some departure from the Augustinian account in the Tractatus, to be sure. While Wittgenstein takes most of our words to have as their meaning the objects that they name, he points out that certain words do not seem to name anything. Logical operators that appear in propositions, for example, don=t represent any object in the world. But these are exceptional. The Tractatus presents a theory which is much more sophisticated than the account given in '1. It was, however, developed under some of the same presuppositions about language found in the primitive account. One of Wittgenstein=s goals in the Investigations is to examine these presuppositions and to expose their failings. The first fifth of the Investigations is dedicated to this task. 5 In addition to challenging these presuppositions, Wittgenstein has a positive goal, that of offering suggestions that will allow philosophers to properly orient their thinking with respect 2 Indeed, in the summary of part I, ' 19 of Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein writes AMy earlier concept of meaning originates in a primitive philosophy of language. - Augustine on the learning of language. He describes a calculus of our language, only not everything that we call language is this 3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York, 1974, Ibid., This figure comes from Robert Fogelin=s Wittgenstein. 6

7 to language. In particular, he seeks to dissolve problems that arise from misconceived notions of meaning and understanding. The notion that a word=s meaning is the object that it picks out rests on a overly simplistic view of the variety of roles that words can play in a language. In '1, Wittgenstein remarks that the Augustinian account doesn=t take into account the variety of words, but rather focuses on nouns, names, and to some extent properties. If one considers proper names, then it is easy to see how this view is motivated. According to a direct-reference theory, a proper name picks out a unique object, and if a proper name could be said to have a meaning, then it seems sensible that the meaning just is the object that it names. With a little work, the view could be extended to apply to regular nouns and adjectives, with the latter being treated as the names of properties, for example. If, however, one considers all the different kinds of words that are found in language, it becomes difficult to maintain this account. Wittgenstein illustrates this in '1 of the Investigations with the grocery-list example. Imagine a grocer who is handed a slip on which the words five red apples has been written. The grocer opens the apple drawer, consults a color chart to match the apples, and counts from one to five, taking an apple out for each number. The various acts that the grocer performs relevant to the different words is supposed to show the differences between the types of words in question. The word apple may be used to pick out a particular type of object, but the word five doesn t seem to be used in the same way. Having located what he believes to be the primary misunderstanding motivating the account of meaning that he attributes to Augustine, namely, that all words function as proper names, Wittgenstein presents an alternative. He connects meaning with use. Meaningfulness in general is having a use, and the meaning of a particular word is given by the way that the word is 7

8 used. Of course, not just any use of a word is relevant. Any theory of meaning must account for correct and incorrect usage. Mere regularities in the way that words are used do not necessarily reveal correct usage. They show only how words are, in fact, used. Statements about regularities only describe word use, they do not prescribe. The implication of this is that there must be rules that are to be obeyed in order for a use of a word to be correct. Rules, unlike mere regularities, are prescriptive, and as such are capable of grounding the notion of correctness and incorrectness with respect to the application of words. The use of a word in a language, then, is a rule-governed activity. With this consideration in mind, Wittgenstein draws an analogy between language use and playing chess. 6 Here, the chess pieces correspond with words, and meanings correspond with the rules governing the appropriate moves of the pieces. This analogy is useful, but one should not take it too far. The rules governing the use of an individual chess piece are fairly circumscribed, and the variety of chess pieces is not great. The rules governing the use of individual words, however, are likely to be much more complex, allowing for a much greater number of that one can make. The variety of words exceeds the rather modest variety of chess pieces. Nevertheless, the chess analogy, though perhaps over simple, is helpful in understanding the view of language in Wittgenstein=s later works. Language is like a game. Language, like games, is an activity pursued according to certain rules, rules which are not imposed upon it from without, but are rather the constructs of the community of players. Understanding a language is similar to understanding chess: as the latter is exhibited in the playing of the game, the former is exhibited in the speaking of the language. 6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 1953, '31. 8

9 To say that meaning is connected with rule-governed use is not strikingly illuminating. A host of questions arise from such a characterization. What exactly counts as a rule? What does participation in a rule-governed activity consist in? What is involved in understanding the demands of a rule? Wittgenstein dedicates a significant portion of the Investigations, from around '143-'242, to questions such as these. Clearly, if one is to have a firm grasp of Wittgenstein=s thoughts on meaning, one must attend to these sections with care. One of the goals of this thesis, and arguably the most difficult to accomplish, will be to examine these sections with the aim of arriving at a clear view of Wittgenstein=s position on the nature of rules and rule following, and how these are related to the possibility of meaning. To preview what will follow: It will be argued that when Wittgenstein speaks of rules, he refers to statements given to justify, explain, or teach certain behavior. Understanding which actions count as being in accordance with a rule, according to Wittgenstein, is the ability to engage in certain normative behavior (such as the aforementioned acts of justification, explanation, and teaching) with respect to a rule. Saul Kripke=s interpretation of Wittgenstein=s often cryptic remarks on rule-following have become the focus of an intense scrutiny over the past two decades. According to Kripke, Wittgenstein was presenting a skeptical paradox regarding language. Not much work is done by Kripke in attempting to justify this reading of Wittgenstein, but the first sentence of '201 of the Investigations is specifically singled out: AThis was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the It is possible, of course, to understand a rule, but to make a mistake as to what the rule requires in a given situation. What is being suggested here, and in earlier passages of the Investigations, is more radical than this rather pedestrian observation. One might be inclined to think that a given 9

10 rule can be applied or misapplied to a given situation. Correct application of a rule implies the existence of an interpretation of the rule which determines which actions accord with it. This interpretation, though, runs into the same problem, and seems to require a further interpretation, which itself stands in need of an interpretation, and so on ad infinitum. Wittgenstein gives an example in '185 which can be of some help in illustrating this. A student of arithmetic has been given a task of writing a series of numbers, starting from 0, and increasing by 2 at every step. He performs the task well up to 1000, upon which he proceeds by writing A1004, 1008, 1012, One is inclined to say that the student misunderstood the rule by which he was supposed to act. Yet it can also be said that he proceeded according to the rule as he interpreted it. The student was ordered to proceed by the rule AAdd 2 to the previous number in the but interpreted the rule as AAdd 2 to the previous number in the series up to 1000, and add 4 following So the student, in proceeding by adding 4 after 1000, was acting in accordance with the rule that interpreted. This case can be generalized: every action can be said to accord with some rule under some interpretation. This threatens the distinction between correct and incorrect ways of responding to rules. The concepts of correctness and incorrectness rest on the notion of an act being in accord or disaccord with a rule, but if the example of '185 shows that any action can be in accord with a rule, then any act can be considered correct. Furthermore, if any action can be in accord with a rule upon some interpretation, then any act can similarly be said to violate a rule upon some interpretation. It gets worse: for if meaning is connected with rule-governed use, but the notion of acting in accordance with a rule is hollow (as the above example attempts to show), then it would seem that the concept of meaning itself is unintelligible. 10

11 It is considerations such as these that Kripke sees as indicating that Wittgenstein was presenting a skeptical paradox with respect to meaning. In the third section of his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, he writes 7 Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, 1982, p Ibid., p.9. There can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word. Each new application we make is a leap in the dark; any present intention could be interpreted so as to accord with anything we may choose to do. So there can be neither accord, nor conflict. 7 Though Kripke does little to show that Wittgenstein truly had this paradox in mind when he wrote the Investigations, he does offer some independent reasons for thinking that a paradox of this sort exists. It comes in the form of a challenge from a skeptic regarding the past and present use of the word >plus=. The reader is asked to assume that though he has used the word >plus= and the symbol >+= many times in the past, he has never performed any computations with numbers larger than 57. When asked to compute >68+57= he responds that the answer is >125=. The skeptic challenges this answer, and claims that the correct response is >5=. The skeptic claims that in the past, >plus= and >+= were used not to denote the function plus, but rather, the function quus. Kripke=s skeptic defines quus as follows: x y = x + y, if x, y < 57 = 5 otherwise. 8 By hypothesis, every action that was undertaken in the past in which >plus= or >+= was used is compatible with the person=s having meant quus instead of plus. The question is whether any fact can be found that establishes that the answer of >125= to the problem given is the right one. The skeptic claims that no fact, behavioral or mental, about the past usage of these terms can be found to establish that one meant plus rather than quus, or that >125= is indeed the right 11

12 answer to >68+57=. Kripke sees the upshot of this as devastating: AWittgenstein=s main problem is that it appears that he has shown all language, all concept formation, to be impossible, indeed unintelligible. 9 Of course, any argument that purports to show that language is impossible will be selfrefuting. Kripke interprets Wittgenstein as offering a solution to the skeptic, but a solution which grants the skeptic=s premise. According to Kripke, Wittgenstein denies the existence of meaningfixing facts. He is able to reject the skeptic=s conclusion because he rejects a picture of language according to which claims about meaning have truth-conditions, that is, admit of evaluation as true or false. There are no facts which make true claims of the sort AS meant m by but this does not show that language is impossible. Two important questions emerge from this. First, is Kripke right in thinking that Wittgenstein presents a skeptical paradox in the Investigations? As Kripke drew from Wittgenstein=s comments on rule-following, a study of sections '143-'242 should help illuminate this question. Again, as a preview, I will contend that though Wittgenstein does attempt to show that there is a problem with a particular view of what it is to follow a rule, that he does not present the skeptical paradox Kripke describes. The second question to consider is whether Kripke=s skeptical solution to the problem, considered independently of whether it is properly attributable to Wittgenstein, is tenable. Once this solution is spelled out, I will argue that it is not a satisfactory answer to the skeptic. Finally, I will consider alternative answers to the skeptic. One of the most common responses is to offer up facts about the dispositions of a speaker, or the dispositions of a select group of speakers, as those which establish the meaning of a term. Such a strategy is reductive, 9 Ibid., p

13 insofar as it is an attempt to ground semantic or normative facts and explain them by reference to purely naturalistic facts about behavior. There are several versions of dispositionalism, each attempting to identify a particular sort of disposition as the meaning-fixing one. I will argue that none of the more prominent versions succeed, and that no version can answer the skeptic. However, the failure of Kripke=s response as well as that of the reductivist should not lead to an adoption of skepticism. In chapter 4, I suggest a fourth way of responding that is non-reductive and denies both the skeptic=s premises and his conclusion. 13

14 CHAPTER 2 WITTGENSTEIN ON MEANING, UNDERSTANDING, AND RULES The purpose of this chapter is to develop a better understanding of Wittgenstein=s views on meaning, understanding, and rule-following, in the hopes that this will provide the ammunition for an attack on Kripke=s interpretation of the Investigations. Getting clear on Wittgenstein=s comments on meaning and understanding is essential for understanding his views on private languages and rules. Of particular importance are Wittgenstein=s claims that a word=s meaning is connected with its use, and that understanding is a practice rather than a mental state. In what follows, I will elaborate on these claims and the reasons for holding them. Live and Dead Signs In the first few pages of The Blue Book and in '432 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein asks what it is that distinguishes the signs of language from the signs that are found in nature. A sign is an object characterized by its broadly speaking. Signs include such things as written symbols, sounds, and gestures, among other things. There are sign types and sign tokens, and tokens of a particular type can be either live or dead. Sign types are neither. Live signs are meaningful; they are those signs that humans use to communicate with one another. These signs possess certain features that those not produced by linguistic beings lack, features which are essential to their use in communication. Whether or not a sign is or is not intrinsic to the sign itself. Two sign tokens of the same type, one of which is produced by a human, and the other by a natural process, can differ in respect to whether they mean anything. The scribblings of a colleague on a bit of paper having the appearance 14

15 Stop are taken to be meaningful when handed to a person distractedly tapping his foot during a tedious philosophy lecture. To be precise, this sign would be taken as a command that he cease his foot-tapping. On the other hand, the marks in a patch of sand made by a traveling snail which have the exact same appearance, while quite extraordinary, would not be taken as an indication that the snail meant for someone to stop doing something, or meant anything at all. The signs, two tokens of the same type, differ with respect to whether or not they mean anything. Though evidently there must be some property that living signs have that dead signs lack, characterizing the property is a difficult task. The fact that meaningful signs are produced exclusively by creatures with mental lives, or by entities standing proxy for minded creatures (translation devices, video and audio projectors, telegraph machines, e.g.) may lead one to think that a sign is meaningful only if its use is accompanied by, traceable to, or produces some special sort of mental activity such as understanding or meaning. Wittgenstein anticipates this suggestion: It seems that there are certain definite processes bound up with the working of language, processes through which alone language can function. I mean the processes of understanding and meaning. The signs of our language seem dead without these mental processes; and it might sem that the only function of the signs is to induce such processes, and that these are the things we ought really to be interested in. Thus, if you are asked what is the relation between a name and the thing it names, you will be inclined to answer that the relation is a psychological one, and perhaps when you say this you think in particular of the mechanism of association. 1 If this view is correct, then the property that distinguishes live signs from dead ones is that of being accompanied by (in one way or another) a special mental process. For the word 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book. New York, 1960 p

16 >red= to be meaningful, then, for example, it would have to be the case that whenever it is uttered, the speaker has a certain mental state, perhaps that of picturing the color red to himself, and anyone who understands the sign likewise has that mental state. Wittgenstein challenges this picture of meaning and understanding by asking the reader to suppose that the mental process is replaced by a similar outward process. Instead of someone imagining the color red, suppose he consults a color chart whenever he is called upon to use (be the use interpretive or expressive 2 ), the word >red= (for the purposes of this thought experiment, a consultation should be taken as consisting exclusively of outward behavior, such as the movement of a finger across the chart from the symbol >red= to a color patch). This doesn=t have the intuitive force of the original example from the previous paragraph. It doesn=t seem that the outward act of consulting the chart accompanying the utterance suffices to make the word being used meaningful. Consulting a color chart just following the utterance of the word >red=, explained in purely behavioral terms, is to be the sort of activity that a well-programed robot (something that is generally thought not to be capable of understanding) could do. Wittgenstein=s comments on this are a sketchy; some interpretative work is required. The original thought was that some mental process which coexisted with an utterance or a sign served to make that utterance or sign meaningful. Wittgenstein then suggests that outward processes be substituted for mental ones: 2 I have borrowed the distinction between interpretative and expressive uses from Alan Millar=s article AThe Normativity of Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. 51 p The distinction is intended to capture both passive and active uses of a word, where the user is a and a respectively. 16

17 There is one way of avoiding at least partly the occult appearance of the processes of thinking, and it is, to replace in these processes any working of the imagination by acts of looking at real objects. 3 Shortly following this passage, he shifts and speaks of a substitution of the objects of these processes, specifically painted images and mental images respectively: If the meaning of the signy is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modeled image. 4 Presumably, he felt that the actions involved were similar enough to justify this shift in focus from processes to objects, that the only relevant difference between imagining a color and picking out a color patch on a chart was the type of image involved. Whether this move is in fact warranted or not is debatable. For now, this concern should be put aside in favor of getting clear on other aspects of Wittgenstein=s reasoning in this matter. In The Blue Book, Wittgenstein claims that a painted image fails to Aimpart any life to the 5 that it accompanies. This view can be fleshed out as follows. A swatch of red is not, on its own, meaningful. It may be used in communication, certainly, but in any instance where it is, there is some feature of the context which makes it meaningful. In this way, the swatch has the same status as a word divorced from whatever property makes it meaningful; it is, in short, dead. Substituting the swatch for a mental image has the effect of placing on it the burden of making the utterance of the word >red= meaningful, and this, according to the view in question, is something that a dead sign cannot do. 3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book. New York, 1960 p Ibid., p.5. 5 Ibid. 17

18 Under the view in question (allowing for Wittgenstein=s focus on the object rather than the act), a mental image is capable of conferring meaning. The question is what feature of a mental image gives it this ability. If a dead sign lacks this ability, perhaps the mental image is itself a live sign. Its being live could not be the result of coexisting with another mental image as that would result in a regress, for that additional mental image would either be live or dead, and if dead of no use, and if alive itself requiring, by the same argument, some distinct associated mental image, and so on. Instead, this life would have to be something intrinsic to the mental image, and something capable of giving life to dead signs (though how it does this is not at all clear). Wittgenstein rejects this line of thinking. To say that mental objects have this ability but to be unable to say how, or to give any in-depth explanation of it, would be to attribute to mental objects properties. The Augustinian account Wittgenstein discusses in '1 may fall prey to the charge that in appeals to such occult properties. Recall that the central feature of this account was that words function as names of objects; for a word to have a meaning, is for it to name something. The relationship between a name and the thing named must be made explicit, and Wittgenstein=s focus on accounts of understanding and meaning in the opening pages of The Blue Book indicate that he believes that this relationship is usually taken to be psychological. Meaning, in the Augustinian sense, would, if the above considerations are correct, involve a mental process which cannot fully be explained. Any account involving essential but mysterious elements is, of course, at a serious disadvantage, all else being equal, in comparison to an account involving elements whose natures are entirely explicable. Another approach is needed. Wittgenstein rejects the possibility that either an outward process or a mental process accompanying a word can make the word meaningful. He concludes that the mistake is to think 18

19 that anything accompanying a word makes it meaningful. The Augustinian account seems to labor under this mistaken idea, and so should be viewed as suspect. Here can be seen the first hints that Wittgenstein=s account of meaning won=t turn out to be very tidy. In the preceding chapter, another deficiency of the Augustinian account was noted. The central topic of the first dozen or so passages of the Philosophical Investigations is the rejection of the oversimplified view that a word=s meaning is the object that it names. This view has proven seductive. It can be found in the works of Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein, among others. 6 The objection to this view is not that it is false that words name objects (though not in the sense of naming found in the Tractatus, in which a word stands for the object it names in a representation whose structure is isomorphic with a possible state of affairs), but rather, that such a characterization doesn=t accurately reflect the complexity of natural language. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises AIs this an appropriate description or The answer is: AYes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to 7 Of course, if Wittgenstein=s comments from The Blue Book are any indication, Augustine=s account still suffers from the mistaken idea that a mental process must accompany the use of a word in order for the word to be meaningful. The comments here, though, seem to presuppose that an account of naming has been found which requires no such accompaniment. 8 6 For further discussion of the influence of the Augustinian account on these thinkers, see G.P. Baker and M.S. Hacker Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning Part I: Essays. Oxford, 2005, pp Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 1953, '3. 8 See the grocer=s list example in '1 for an illustration of what this might look like. 19

20 Naming, then, is a perfectly legitimate use of a word. It is not, however, the only legitimate use. Imperatives, interrogatives, color-terms and logical connectives don=t seem to name anything unless one is to posit a very rich ontology. Yet even if one were to do so, to describe these words as naming various objects would be to obscure the very different ways in which they are used. In '11, Wittgenstein compares the corpus of words to tools in a tool-box, and the variety of functions of words to the variety of functions of the tools within. He writes: Imagine someone=s saying: AAll tools serve to modify something. Thus a hammer modifies the position of a nail, a saw the shape of a board, and so - And what is modified by a rule, a glue-pot, and nails? - AOur knowledge of a thing=s length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of a - Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions? 9 Saying AAll tools serve to modify is akin to saying Aall words name in that important differences among the relevant body of things are glossed over in an attempt to provide a uniform characterization which, in the end, is quite uninformative. Meaning as Use What is needed is an account of meaning that respects the variety of functions that words may have. The emphasis that Wittgenstein gives to this points the way to the desired account: the meaning of a word is determined by the use that word has in communication. This is explicitly stated in the opening pages of The Blue Book: ABut if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its 10 It is implied in the discussion of the grocer=s list in '1, with the introduction of the notion of a language-game in '7, is made explicit in the discussion of ostensive definitions of '30: Aan ostensive definition explains the use - the 9 Ibid., ' Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford, 1958, p.4. 20

21 meaning - of a word when the overall role of the word in language is and once again (though with a bit of caution) in '43: AFor a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the The use of a word can be seen as the behavior that occurs before, during, and after its utterance. Consider the primitive language introduced in '2. One might be inclined to view the sparse vocabulary of this language (>block=, >pillar=, >slab=, >beam=) as consisting of the names of objects. This seems appropriate as within the context in which language is employed, there are four types of objects associated with the use of each of the four words. In thinking of these words as names of objects, though, one would ignore a crucial feature of their use: they function exclusively as commands. The master builder calls out one of the words when he wishes his assistant to bring him the corresponding stone. The assistant, upon hearing the master call out, selects a stone from the appropriate stack, and delivers it to the master. The actions of the master involving each word, and the assistant=s reactions to those, constitute the use in this language of those words. Meaning is thus tied to a practice which occurs over time - a word cannot have a meaning outside of any such practice. Wittgenstein thus has the makings of an answer to the question posed at the outset of this chapter: a live sign is one which has a role in the activities of those who employ it. There must be a regularity in the use of a word for it to be meaningful. The Language-Game Analogy In his later writings, Wittgenstein developed an analogy comparing the use of language to playing a game. He calls the activity in '2 between the master carpenter and his assistant a language-game. While it is billed as a complete primitive language, it is also a practice that occurs in complex natural languages. Though this account is a bit simplified, the game that the 21

22 master and the assistant plays is one of many different types of activities that can be found in language. In calling this activity a game, Wittgenstein is making a number of suggestions about the way a language works. When one plays a game, one has to abide by certain rules in order to be said to play the game correctly. Not just any move in chess is appropriate; one cannot, for example, move a rook diagonally and be said to playing chess properly. So too with language. While meaning is connected with use, not just any use of a word is correct. For there to be correctness and incorrectness in word usage, there must be rules of word-usage, and conformity to those rules is a necessary condition for proper use. The rules of a game are conventional insofar as they are the products of those who play the games; the same is true for language. The rules governing word-usage and sentence formation are not imposed from outside of the system. This idea is explicitly addressed in a later section of the Philosophical Investigations: AThe rules of grammar may be called if that is to mean that the aim of grammar is nothing but that of the 11 This view of the nature of the rules of language represents a significant change in Wittgenstein=s thought from his Tractarian days, when he was inclined to believe that the rules of language were imposed from without - the rules of language were the rules of logic. The diversity that one finds when one considers the different types of games is mirrored in the diversity in the various functions of language. In his comments on family resemblances, Wittgenstein remarks that there is no set of features, nor any one feature that is common to all games. Presumably, he means that if one were to attempt to give an explanation for the concept of a game, one could not respond by saying that AA game necessarily has such-and-such 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 1953, '

23 or Aanything which has such-and-such features is a Now, it isn=t at all obvious that a consideration of the concept >game= fails to yield necessary conditions - some characteristic or characteristics common to all games. Games, it seems, must be rule-governed activities. Anything which is not an activity cannot be a game, and it is difficult to conceive of a game completely lacking in rules. Consider a child playing with blocks, but with no eye for building a stable structure. The child picks up pieces, stacks some, throws others, and puts others still in his mouth. Surely the child is playing, but is he playing a game? It is not clear that he is. Wittgenstein does not go to great lengths to defend this view of games, giving no explicit examples of a game which is not rule-governed. Perhaps he doesn=t need to. It might suffice to say that games are not, in fact, identified as such in virtue of being rule-governed activities (for this seems to be a bit too vague of a criterion for most speakers), and that if pressed, a speaker will be unable to cite those features in virtue of which he makes his determinations. Assuming that Wittgenstein is correct in his view about family-resemblance concepts, any attempt to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for such concepts would arbitrarily exclude certain instances from consideration that should be included in the concept=s extension. What is being suggested is that the set of all games forms an imperfect community 12, a Acomplicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of 13 The same, he thinks, can be said of language. One cannot give necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as a linguistic activity. The various functions of language are too disparate and resist such an easy classification. 12 To borrow a phrase from Nelson Goodman in The Structure of Appearance. 2 nd ed., Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 1953, '66. 23

24 If the concept of a game has indeterminate boundaries, then it might seem that the term >game= lacks a fixed meaning, and this lack is not the result of the superficial features of language, but rather, the result of indeterminacy in the rules governing the use of the term. When one uses the term >game=, one is not acting in accordance with a rule of the form AApply the term >game= to all and only those things which have such-and-such features Whatever the rule governing the use of the word >game= looks like, it must reflect the indeterminate boundaries of the concept. To press the point a bit further, consider a potential definition of the word >game= as a rule-governed activity. If this definition were to be successful, then the rules governing the use of the word would seem to leave no room for ambiguity: the word >game= should be applied to only those activities which are rule-governed. However, if Wittgenstein is correct, then no such definition can be given. The Acomplicated network of doesn=t admit of an analytic definition, and the rules governing usage must reflect this complexity. Wittgenstein doesn=t think that the inability to give an analytic definition of the word >game=, nor the inability to give a list of rules strictly determining the correct use of the word, threatens one=s ability to understand the word. Neither is one=s ability to explain the meaning of the word threatened; a definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is not required, rather, all one needs to do is to point out examples and say AThese are For familyresemblance concept-terms, ostensive definitions can serve to explain the use of the term. This is possible insofar as the members of a linguistic community agree in matters of classification and generalization. That a speaker is unable to specify the network of similarities that unites certain things under one concept does not impinge upon his ability to classify certain things that fall under that concept, for having been trained in the use of terms through example, and 24

25 participating in what Wittgenstein calls a Ashared form of with the members of his community, he will follow the rules for the use of words without making a conscious decision to behave in this way rather than that. 14 Wittgenstein doesn=t make clear exactly how prevalent he believes family-resemblance concepts to be. Due to the rather benign appearance of the concepts of language and game, one might think that many everyday concepts might turn out to lack any essential features, despite the fact that they have been given (or people have attempted to give them) analytic definitions in the past. If it turns out that many of the concepts taken to have fixed boundaries are, in fact, family-resemblance concepts, then many words will not admit of analytic definition. Ostensive Definitions While Wittgenstein doesn=t claim that there is any one form that the rules of word-usage must take, the inability to give analytic definitions for family-resemblance concept terms indicates that ostensive definitions can play an important role in teaching and explaining the use of words. By examining some of Wittgenstein=s comments on ostensive definitions, it should be possible to draw out his view on the nature of rules in general. For those terms expressing family-resemblance concepts, pointing to examples can help establish correct usage of the term. As indicated in the last section, for this form of explanation to work, a certain degree of agreement amongst members of a linguistic community is required. For an individual who did not find our way of classifying things under the concept game natural, ostensive definitions would likely fail. This should not be too troubling, though, as any account of language presupposes a certain degree of agreement among speakers. 14 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 1953, '

26 An ostensive explanation need not be sufficient for explaining the use of only those words for which an analytic definition might be found wanting. In '28, Wittgenstein gives a partial list of the types of words for which an ostensive definition can be given: Aa proper name, the name of a colour, the name of a material, a numeral, the name of a point of the compass, and so Numerals, the names of materials, and the points of the compass don=t seem to resemble family-resemblance terms - their application requires certain specifiable necessary conditions. Nevertheless, it is Wittgenstein=s belief that not only can such terms be explained through ostension, but that explanations of this sort are in no way deficient or subordinate to more formal types of explanation. This view can be found in '28, just following the passage quoted above: AThe definition of the number two, AThat is called - pointing to two nuts - is perfectly When one explains the use of a word, one gives a sentence (or a number of sentences) which is intended to show those circumstances in which it is correct to use the word. This sentence serves as a rule for the use of the word. An ostensive explanation is no different. In explaining the use of a word, say >game,= by means of pointing to a number of examples and saying AThis is a one has expressed a rule for correct usage of the word. 15 This is not to say that an ostensive definition is the form that the rules for word-usage take. The use of words for geometric shapes, mathematical operations, and the like - words which can be given strict definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions - could be explained in alternative ways, and perhaps more traditional rules are necessary for closing up those gaps left in language 15 Wittgenstein indicates at several points that an explanation of a word=s use serves as a rule for that word=s use. Cf. The Blue Book, p. 12 (an ostensive definition is a Arule of the usage of the and in '30 of the Philosophical Investigations (an ostensive definition Aexplains the use - the meaning - of a 26

27 by ostensive definitions. Yet in many cases, ostensive definitions serve perfectly well as rule for the use of words. As Wittgenstein takes the concept of a rule to be a family-resemblance concept, it stands to reason that there is no one form that rules must have. Yet ostensive definitions can function as rules for word usage in a great number of cases, more than perhaps was traditionally thought, as indicated by Wittgenstein=s claims that things such as numerals can be defined in this manner. As a matter of practice, ostensive explanations are often given for words, and it is conceivable that this may be the only explanation that a speaker has ever been given and the only one that he is in a position to give in response to a request. It might be denied that an ostensive definition is capable of filling the role that Wittgenstein assigns to it. An ostensive definition, one might claim, leaves too much unspecified in that appealing to a finite number of samples in explaining a word=s use doesn=t provide a rule by which the correctness of a word=s application in every conceivable instance can be judged. This worry can be read in at least two ways. In giving an ostensive explanation, only a finite number of samples can be appealed to. There may be an inclination to say that the rule so given specifies that the word properly applies to only those objects specifically referred to. This type of reaction would result from taking the statements used in the explanation (i.e. several statements of the form AThis is to be describing the objects in question. If these statements were descriptive, then indeed, they would not be capable of playing a role in expressing a rule governing the use of the word in cases beyond those already mentioned. If one points to objects x 1, x 2, x 3, and x 4 and says about each AThis is as a way of describing some feature of each, this doesn=t justify saying of object x 5 that it is red. This is because a description has no normative import; a true statement describing one object as being a certain way has no bearing 27

28 on the truth-value of a statement describing a second object as being that way - a descriptive statement of the form AThis is when indicating a fire-truck, cannot establish the correctness of saying AThat is when indicating any distinct object (the truth value of the second statement is established independently of the first). However, this is not what happens when one gives an ostensive definition. One is not describing some feature of an object, but rather establishing which type of thing it is correct to apply a word to. 16 Ostensive definitions are used in such normative activities such as teaching and justifying, they should not be seen as merely describing certain entities as being a certain way, but as prescribing correct linguistic behavior. Against this claim it might be charged that an ostensive definition isn=t the sort of thing that can accomplish such a task - that it is a category mistake to think of an ostensive definition as having a normative component. At best, an ostensive definition gives samples from which a rule governing the use of a word can be deduced, but the definition itself fails to function as a rule. Certainly, an ostensive definition does not have the form that is usually expected of a rule. If, however, the concept of a rule is a family-resemblance concept, then this is not too damning of a charge. Moreover, it would seem that, for Wittgenstein, developing rules is itself a language game. A rule is the type of thing that can be appealed to for justification as to why a word was used in a particular way, used to explain to a novice how a word is properly used, and to serve as an instrument of evaluation regarding particular instances. An ostensive definition can do any of these things, and thus seems to have a role in the game of giving rules for word-usage. The second way of reading the above worry gains a bit more traction, but is, in Wittgenstein=s view, based on a misconception about language, one that has already been p Cf. Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Part I. Oxford, 1980, 28

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